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Topic: Hive Moving Equipment. (Read 8093 times)

I've been trying to find a piece of equipment to help me move my hives singlehandedly. Every once in a while, I'll see a picture of a odd looking dolly/hand truck, that can be used to move hives with only one person. (I'm a one man band.) It seems to have an extra arm that clamps on the hive to hold it in place and keeps it parallel to ground.

I've looked at some of the catalogs and would like to have one of these, but the price is a bit high. I was thinking about using a conventional hand truck/dolly, but was worried that when the hives got tipped over on the hand truck, the frames might bump back and forth and damage the hive.

Tucker, how many hives do you have to load and unload, What about constructing yourself some type of boom and use an electric winch with a sling around the hive? An electric winch that will pull or lift up to say 500 pounds would be fairly inexpensive. I am sure you could create a boom pretty cheap too.? I bought my wife a small winch so she can pull the hardtop off of her jeep all by herself. Works well.

My problem is I have several hives on a hill side. The distance to the gravel road varies and I need to move the hives a distance of about 20 feet to about 100 yards. The hill side has too much of a slope for a truck. I need to hand truck to move the hives to the truck (I also need to find a way to get the hives on the truck. so a winch is needed.)

I had seen a hand truck with dual tires, which looked great, but I was wondering if I'd have to modify the hand truck to keep the hives from tilting too much.

Hey Trucke1, Did you buy any hand truck till now? I can understand your problem. And your decision for hand truck was also good. You will see number of hand trucks available in market with lots of variations in them. You can choose which ever is suitable for your purpose of moving your hives to truck.

The hill is too steep to drive a truck on, but you want to move a heavy hive with a hand truck of some sort? If your truck is uphill, you may not be able to drag the hive up to the truck. If your truck is downhill, the hive may drag you downhill and slam your butt into the side of the truck.Be careful and get a good game plan together. Don't hurt yourself.

I've used a conventional hand truck to move hives before. It worked, but I wouldn't do it again. It's still labor intensive.

It required me to put a migratory top down on top of the feet of the hand truck, then a bottom board, then stack each hive body that I wanted to move, then a cover. When it's all done, use a ratchet strap to hold it all together and away you go. I only had one mishap when I tried to do it without the ratchet strap (hit a bump and boxes went everywhere). Of course, it requires you to reverse the process whenever you have arrived at the spot. I could have just ratchet strapped them all down, then used the hand truck if the hives were flat on the ground, but they were sitting on cinder blocks (to avoid rotting) which meant that I had to put them on the truck first.

so what do most of you use a cart like Micheal Bush or something elseI have moved them with an assistant but would like to come up with a to do by myself and didn't really want to set up a gin pole to set on trailer

We, Jim (the other Jim) and I, use a large yellow wagon. Strap the hive together, and put it on the wagon. Don't think I would want to try taking it up and down steep hills. There is a commercial unit that would be perfect for what you need but it is very pricey. It is in one of the threads here. I would not worry about leaning the hives back wards as long as you are parallel to the frames. I was taught to place the hives on there ends rather than flat on the ground and it does not seem to bother the bees. Bee careful on those hills. You might want to use a wagon with 1 or 2 supers/brood boxes at a time strapped to the wagon. I sure wouldn't load my 4 super hive on it. The last time I moved the hives I took the honey off the night before and that way I was just moving a brood box and an empty super. Good luck.Jim

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I worked for a moving company... For 2 weeks. One thing I can tell you about hand trucks, they are the coolest little piece of equipment, but if you have more than you can handle it will yank you to the ground and drag you down that hill, with the bees along for the ride. If somebody invented a braking system, nobody uses it.

I can relate to the problem of moving the hives though. I found a video of a cool little hand crank style hive mover, but can't find it offhand. I did find all the other types of lifters and movers. There are 18 videos in this list, some of them repeats.

Mostly I move them a box at a time. If I'm moving it in the yard I just carry them a box at a time. If I'm moving them somewhere else, I load them on the trailer a box at a time, wait until early morning before light, close off the entrances with duct tape and drive to where I'm going and unload them a box at a time. All by hand.

A hand truck comes in very handy for moving hive bodies of honey from yard to truck, probably not so much for moving colonies of bees unless your hives are on the ground and you can grab them without taking them apart. The last yard I build I got smart and build it wide enough so I can have two rows of bees one facing south, one north (yes I know wrong direction but so are half the colonies on pallets) and drive my truck right in between them. I even paid two hundred dollars and had dirt put in and leveled out before I put hive stands and colonies in the yard. I cant tell you how nice this works. I can lift boxes up and set them right in the box of truck, no need to drag and carry stuff out of the yard killing myself. I will post a pic if someone wants to see it.

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